LOVE

FILM REVIEW - LOVE

A bad student film.

With films such as Irréversible and Into the Void under his belt, we should be well accustomed to Gaspar Noé testing our levels of patience and endurance, but here the filmmaker crosses the line from provocation to outright trolling.

Love is essentially two hours of unsimulated sex – in 3D – with 15 minutes of story wedged in-between the cracks (fnar). Murphy (Karl Glusman) receives a phonecall informing him that his ex-girlfriend, Electra (Aomi Muyock) is missing and possibly suicidal. He then eats some opium and reminisces about all the weird sex they had together. And that’s an awful lot of sex… sex in parking garages, sex in niteclubs, and a 10-minute threesome that’s like watching snakes fighting on a bed with Harold Faltemeyer’s Top Gun Anthem playing over the top.

Yes it’s shocking, but for all the wrong reasons. Clunky dialogue such as “I’m just really in my head right now” and a risibly pretentious voiceover give the impression of a bad student film. The first-time actors are fine at standing still, staring and autoerotic activities such as ejaculating, but their inexperience is woefully apparent in scenes where speaking (or actual acting) is required.

It’s all very tiresome. The 3D sex is a gimmick, and can’t disguise the fact that Noé has nothing to say. Tommy Wiseau should watch his back. Love may yet displace The Room’s reputation as the “Citizen Kane of bad movies.”